


I drink the air before me

by Dhillarearen



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: (first chapter angst with happy ending second chapter fluff with fluffy ending), Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Smooching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-13 22:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11194980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dhillarearen/pseuds/Dhillarearen
Summary: Shallan and Kaladin share stormlight in two very different circumstances (or: the shotgunning stormlight fic).





	1. Chapter 1

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,

Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?

 

— _The Tempest_ , Act V Scene 1

 

* * *

 

It was dark by the time she found him.

She wouldn’t have found him at all if it weren’t for Syl, shooting suddenly out of the ground far up to her right and illuminating the blue-coated figure fetched up against a spur of rock. Shallan ran, infusing stormlight to outpace the former bridgemen alongside her, and dropped to her knees beside Kaladin.

“I can’t wake him,” Syl said; the spren sounded frantic. “He ran out of stormlight—“

_No._

Shallan fumbled for her safepouch, thrusting her spheres into Kaladin’s upturned hand. They rolled away, bright sparks in the darkness, and she scraped her wrist on the ground as she gathered them again, this time folding Kaladin’s fingers around them. “Breathe,” she whispered, “Breathe, you impossible man!”

One of the bridgemen—Shallan was sure she knew his name, but she couldn’t _think_ right now— touched two fingers to the side of Kaladin’s throat.“He’s alive,” the man said, relief coloring his voice besides all the bridgemens’ staunch assurance that their Captain had survived. Shallan didn’t need Pattern’s buzz of agreement to believe him.She could feel Kaladin’s heartbeat, and for a moment she let herself sag in fierce joy—but it was horribly, horribly weak under her palms, and Kaladin wasn’t moving.His uniform was torn, filthy from battle, but Shallan pressed her face to that heartbeat, as if hearing it would make it stronger. _Come on, wake up, shout at me for hanging all over you._

The other men had arrived, forming a semicircle around Shallan and Kaladin, and a few of them reached out to lift Kaladin off the ground.Syl flew up, warning, and Shallan growled—she hadn’t known she could even _make_ that sound— and thrust out with her stormlight, sending the men stumbling backwards, shouting and covering their eyes. She pulled Kaladin into her arms, painstakingly gentle, and glared.

“We aren’t going to hurt him, Brightness,” the man who had spoken earlier said.Shallan heard it as if through a glass, distorted and distant. The spheres had scattered again when she had clutched Kaladin to her, but it didn’t matter. They’d been useless.

Pattern’s buzzing grew louder.“This is not normally how you act, when someone is like this,” he said, crawling to perch on Kaladin’s shoulder.“Normally you are…mmm…more focused, it is hard to follow the directions of your thinking…”

“I don’t think he meant to hit the ground as hard as he did,” Syl was saying, “he doesn’t always check to see how fast he’s coming down, and he already had—his arm—“

Shallan looked, and saw that the sleeve of Kaladin’s coat had been punched through, by something much larger than an arrow or even a spear. _Warhammer,_ she thought, spiked like she’d seen some of the highprinces use. How much stormlight had gone into healing his arm that could have been used on whatever his landing had broken?

“Brightness? If you’re not going to let us at him, we can’t get him back to camp.”

With great effort, Shallan forced her thoughts into some semblance of a straight line. “We should’t move him,” she said, passing a hand through Kaladin’s wind-knotted hair. Was that blood? Shallan felt dizzy. You’ve seen blood before, she reminded herself, you’ve seen _him_ bloodied before, but with Kaladin slack and unresponsive against her it was different. 

“You’re trying to make walls again,” said Pattern, reproachful. Syl had become a pale ribbon of light, twisting anxiously near Kaladin’s temple. Almost, Kaladin looked asleep, if you didn’t know any better. Shallan touched a fingertip to his eyelid, but she wasn’t brave enough to lift it. He would have been unconscious for hours, alone, perhaps bleeding into his own brain.

_Why_ hadn’t she paid more attention when Kaladin went on about doctoring? She’d read the odd medical text, true, but she had nowhere near his wealth of expertise, and any clumsy attempt she made was likely to make things worse. She’d fallen into the trap of taking it for granted that he would be there when such things were needed. _Foolish_ , she thought to herself, and stilled her shaking hands.

“You,” she said, pointing to a bridgeman who had stooped to crouch near Kaladin’s feet. “Go and get a surgeon.Get two, if you don’t think they’re good enough.” She didn’t have time to worry about what she would do if the man argued, so luckily he rose and set off at a run in the direction of the camp.Steeling herself, Shallan prodded at the mess of Kaladin’s forehead until she found the gash that ran crosswise, splitting the skin above his right eye. Shallan pressed the sleeve of her safehand against the cut, staunching the sickening trickle of blood, and willed herself not to cry.

Kaladin was the winds and the sky, thunder and anger and exuberance; he was quiet words when she was feeling down, an ironic smile gone too soon, a sharp retort that should have hurt but made her double over laughing. He shouldn’t be so _still._

“You will stop this at once,” she hissed, curling her body over Kaladin so that her hair fell around his face.  “You—you are so infuriating, and you never _listen,_ I’m going to have a lot to say to you when we get back!” Her voice cracked. She bit sharply at the inside of her mouth, tasting blood, and blinked rapidly. _Stormfather, please._  
  
_I can’t lose someone else._

Something pressed against her freehand, resting on Kaladin’s chest. One of the bridgeman had collected her spheres. All that stormlight, there for the taking, so much she could gorge herself on it, but it may as well have been in Kharbranth for all the good it would do Kaladin. Instinctively, Shallan sucked a little bit in, and it puffed out over Kaladin’s face as she breathed. “Please,” she whispered.

She had loved him, she realized, watching him dying in her arms. Such a small thing, in the vastness of the battle they fought, but she had never told him.

Pattern’s buzzing had become a constant hum, crawling up into her ears, and Shallan shook her head to be rid of it. Vaguely she felt someone’s arm around her shoulders, a terrible breach of propriety, but she couldn’t summon the strength to protest.She leaned into the arm, stroking over Kaladin’s jaw, his nose, his forehead, half-formed prayers bubbling to her lips and dying in the heavy space between them. The men were closer around her now, she could feel them, could hear them speaking in muffled voices, but all she could see was Kaladin, the blood, the way Syl’s light bleached his skin pale and deathly.

“Please,” she wept, and _poured_ her stormlight onto him.

“Oh,” said Pattern, “oh!”

Shallan ripped the light from the spheres, so quickly her stomach rebelled, and breathed it out over Kaladin’s face with a force that made her lungs ache.There was no time to think about what she was doing; she sucked in light as fast as she could and drained it into Kaladin’s mouth, sobbing as it swirled uselessly into the air.

“What’s she doing,” a voice said somewhere above her, and she was jostled, hard, from behind.Shallan ignored the interruption and held Kaladin closer. Her spheres were pried from her hand; Shallan struck out, screaming, but found her fist filled again with fresh spheres, glowing in her mind like salvation.

“That’s it, girl, keep doing it like that.”

Handful after handful, Shallan drained spheres, pressing her mouth over Kaladin’s to force the stormlight into his lungs. There was nothing in her mind but her task, no doubt or ridicule that she should presume to know what she was doing. Just the bone-sure need for Kaladin to have this stormlight, and for her to give it to him.

“I think his hand twitched, look!”

Shallan gave. It was all she could do. If she could have emptied her very soul from her body into Kaladin’s, she would have, but in such absence she used stormlight. His mouth sucked in the stormlight greedily now, and so Shallan filled it again and again, making sure he never ran dry.

“Brightness, pull back, don’t choke him!” 

“She can’t, don’t you know anything, leave her be.”

Against her, Kaladin seized, his spine straining into a bow. Shallan kept breathing stormlight, and after a moment he relaxed, coughing. His eyes fluttered open.

“Hello,” Shallan said, stormlight turning the word into a sigh. She had a feeling she was happy, but she couldn’t tell yet.

“Shallan?” Kaladin raised a hand to her face, his fingertips skating over tears. “Why…?” he looked around and saw the bridgemen, and dropped his hand quickly back to his side. “You better not have abandoned your patrols to come find me.”

“Abandoned? Hah! You _are_ patrol!” A large man near the front of the group (Rock, Shallan saw, and realized she could remember such things again) clapped Kaladin carefully on the shoulder, and it was as if a signal had been given; the bridgemen crowded closer, whooping and hollering, and reluctantly Shallan let them cart a protesting Kaladin away into the open air. A rush of exhaustion made her sway where she sat.

“You are not joining,” Pattern observed. “Is this being jealous?”

Shallan watched Lopen wrap his arms around Kaladin and pick him up, laughing as they were buried under an avalanche of back-slapping. She felt herself smile. “No,” she said to Pattern. “They’re his and he’s theirs in a way that’s special.Nobody should get in the way of that.” She spread out her skirts and blinked at the blood on her sleeve. “He’s alive, isn’t he.”

“Ye-es?”

“He’s _alive._ ” Shallan hugged herself tight and started laughing, the sound bouncing off the mountains and coming back a hundredfold. It should have been swallowed up in the clamor of the bridgemen, but the echoes rose atop them, crisp and joyous. Like a strange, many-headed beast, the men turned to look at Shallan, quieting even as her laughter rang on and on. Shallan watched a thin puff of mist float before her eyes and dissipate into the night sky. So there had been a little bit of stormlight left, after all.

Beside her, Pattern made a contented sort of warble. Shallan got the feeling he was proud of her when she made illusions with sound. 

It _had_ taken quite some time.

Rock was the first one to speak. Shallan knew he must have been put in bridge four originally for a reason _,_ but she had not yet seen him dislike anybody. Maybe he hid it from her. 

“Cousin!” He made toward her with huge strides, grinning, and extended a hand; Shallan took it and used it to get to her feet. “I will make you something special to eat, no? To thank for bringing our _tuma'alki_ Captain back to us.”

Buried within the mass of bridgemen, Kaladin made a noise of complaint, and Rock laughed. “Is _tuma'alki_ to have fun without us, and for so long! You will take us with you next time.” Kaladin grumbled again and then the bridgemen were around Shallan, chattering and shouting and switching between thanking her and scolding Kaladin.

The two of them were thrown together for half a moment, the result of an entire battalion trying to reach them both at the same time. Kaladin caught Shallan’s eye and opened his mouth as if to speak, his expression unreadable. Then he winced as the bridgemen’s cheers became a wordless chant, more grunts than anything else, and gave her a small half-smile instead.

It was enough.

 

* * *

 

When they arrived back in camp, Kaladin and Shallan still buried protectively in the center of the bridgemen, they found Adolin at the edge of the command tent, using an ardent for a crutch and cursing a blue streak wide. Shallan shoved her way through the tangle of arms and spears—the bridgemen didn’t quite know how to handle her touching them, and automatically fell back—so she could stand in front of him and cross her arms.

Adolin saw her face and, with visible effort, bit back the rest of his blistering diatribe. Shallan couldn’t blame him for being upset. He had taken a blade in the thigh during the battle, and Dalinar had forbidden him from joining the search party.Dalinar had tried to forbid Shallan as well, and Shallan had had to remind him, once again, that he was not her superior, though sheconceded to his ideas when she judged them correct. Which was often. He knew more of war than she.

“It’s good to see you up,” said Shallan, though Adolin should still have been resting. He had been half-mad with pain when she had seen him last, still fighting to stand and demanding his father reconsider. Dalinar had had to give him a direct order to get him to stop arguing, and even then Shallan had left the camp to him struggling against the doctors who tried to push him back into bed. Clearly, he had been convinced to lie down and take firemoss.

(And thank the Heralds. Shallan knew she should be used to him getting hurt, but she couldn’t help the terrible fear that seized her each time, that _this_ one would be the one that was too much.)  
  
“No it’s not, get off that leg,” Kaladin called. The bridgemen parted, opening up a path between Kaladin and where Shallan and Adolin stood, and Kaladin stalked down it with the fury of a pestered whitespine. “What have you done to yourself, princeling?”

Adolin gaped at him, mouth opening and closing like a skyeel’s, and then bent over—leaning harder on the poor ardent—to laugh loudly. “Storms,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Storms. Don’t ever do that again.” He lowered his voice. “Haven’t been that scared since…I can’t remember ever being that scared, actually, though I’m sure I must have.” He clapped a hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. 

Shallan was suddenly aware of how close the three of them were standing, close enough that she could see the rise and fall of Kaladin and Adolin’s chests, the sweat on their brows. Kaladin’s eyes flicked to her, fathomless in the faint light of the ardent’s glowlamp, and then away.

Shallan looked at Adolin’s hand still on Kaladin’s shoulder, seeming there to stay. At Kaladin allowing it. Remembered how Adolin had gone limp with relief upon seeing her back safe, and the answering leap in her chest. Remembered her realization, when she had thought Kaladin was lost, and then the way he had touched her cheek.

It was time the three of them had a talk, she thought. Anxiety sparked in her chest, but she forced herself to calm down and, in complete defiance to Alethi propriety, stepped closer to lean her head on Adolin’s shoulder, placing her freehand on Kaladin’s arm.Both men reacted with embarrassment, Adolin fidgeting and Kaladin flushing a dark, rather fetching maroon.

Storms, she loved them.And from the way they acted around her, and each other, there was the chance that…perhaps…the three of them…

Now _she_ was blushing. Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she took mercy on her boys and pulled back. “Report and then surgeon’s tent, both of you,” she said, ushering them inside. The ardent—who had been standing an arm’s length away, pointedly not looking at the three of them—summoned one of their order to take charge of Kaladin as they again took Adolin’s arm.Whatever the result of the conversation—whatever Shallan’s hopes—it could wait until Kaladin and Adolin were fed, washed, and most of all, well.

Her boys. _Hers._

She liked the sound of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn't even supposed to happen but apparently there was an angst blockage that had to come out before the fluff could (thank goodness for continuity because otherwise this would've ended sadly as well whooo)


	2. Chapter 2

…fall to't, yarely,

or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir.

 

_— The Tempest_ , Act I Scene 1

 

* * *

 

 

“How _did_ you do it?”

Kaladin, perched on ledge of Shallan’s window, turned at the sound of Adolin’s voice. It was improper for Shallan to have two young men in her rooms, but she had maps and papers spread out several sheets thick over the desk pushed against the far wall, and had refused to leave them. She didn’t look up when Adolin spoke, though the question had been directed to her, and Adolin felt himself smile. He’d decided not to examine too closely why he liked when she ignored him, and simply enjoy it. 

“Nobody told you?” asked Kaladin. “Rock, Lopen, Teft?”

“Closed up tighter than a rockbud soon as I asked. All they’d say was that she saved you using some of your ‘Radiant Glow.’” Adolin paused. “I think that one was a pun.”

Fondness flickered over Kaladin’s face, transforming his serious features and making him almost, for once, look his age instead of a man ten years older. “It’s a good idea to have a shy tongue around lighteyes. They’re smarter than you, princeling.”

“ _Your_ tongue’s not shy around me,” Adolin said, winking. Kaladin gave an unimpressed grunt, but shifted awkwardly on the stone, and Adolin floundered. It was still new, this…arrangement between the three of them, and to Adolin’s chagrin he was as clumsy with it as a boy of fifteen, tripping over his shoes at his first official court dance. 

It was just, he had spent so long being berated and despaired of for his wandering eyes thatthe fact that he was _allowed_ to look at more than one person now was turning all the rules he’d learned for romantic companionship on their heads. Or. Not _all_ the rules. He still laughed at Shallan’s jokes (of course he did, they were funny, even when he couldn’t understand them) andmet Kaladin’s gaze more often than he strictly needed to (Kaladin’s eyes were so compelling, made Adolin feel lightning-struck just looking at them). He teased and flattered and took their arms and wondered how this was possible, that he could get to have them both. Surely it was a dream. This sort of thing never worked out this well for him, and _twice?_

Whatever he’d done to make the Almighty think he deserved them, he was grateful a thousand times.

He could tell the others felt it, too, though it was easier to tell with Kaladin. When things were…physical, he had the confidence of a solider who had done as most soldiers did, meaningless releases of tension within the ranks. When Shallan spoke to him softly, however, or Adolin tucked one of Kaladin’s unruly locks behind his ear… Adolin knew a frightened man when he saw him. He and Shallan had taken Kaladin aside in the first week and asked if they should stop, and Kaladin had fumbled his way through a request that they didn’t, that he _did_ like the gentleness. He simply wasn’t sure he deserved it.

“I can not do that. The…jokes,” Adolin said. “If it bothers you.”

“It doesn’t. Bother me, I mean.” Kaladin shifted again. “I…I’m just not…I told you, I’m not used to this sort of thing.” He got that look he did every time Shallan kissed his cheek, like he had been handed something precious and spun-sugar fragile, and he was afraid it would break in his hands. It made Adolin want to pull Kaladin into his arms and tell him all the reasons he was wonderful. It made Adolin want to kiss him.

Adolin got up—he’d been sprawled on Shallan’s rug, tossing a sphere into the air and catching it—and walked to the windowsill and Kaladin, gripping briefly at one of his hanging knees. On flat feet Kaladin was only a few inches taller than Adolin, but the ledge put Kaladin head and shoulders above him, and Adolin had to crane his neck to meet his eyes. “It’s that charming glare of yours. Too handsome by half.”

“Idiot,” said Kaladin. He pinched Adolin’s chin and gave him a kiss, soft and fleeting, and tried to pretend he wasn’t blushing afterwards.Adolin ducked his head to hide how sappy his grin had become.

“ _Human_ thing, I told you,” Kaladin said to his own left shoulder, and waved his hand at the air there. He never explained what Syl said when she didn’t feel like showing herself, and though Adolin was curious, he didn’t mind. Even a spren should be entitled to her privacy.

Adolin contented himself with a nod and a smile in the direction of Kaladin’s shoulder and let part of his weight rest against him.Even now, Kaladin held tension in his body, like a rope pulled to straining, but it was less than it usually was, and Adolin was glad to see Kaladin relax even a little. He felt Kaladin’s arm curl around his waist, tentative, and Adolin leaned into the touch to encourage it.

“Drat!” Shallan thumped both fists on the map in front of her and shoved back her chair with an earsplitting screech that made both Kaladin and Adolin wince. “Drat, drat, drat!” She hopped up and began pacing back and forth behind her desk, muttering and pulling faces.

Adolin held up a hand. “Shallan? Is something wrong?”

“Oh!” Shallan jumped, as if she’d forgotten Adolin and Kaladin were there, and turned to them with an apologetic look. “I’m sorry I haven’t been much fun.You don’t have to stay. I have to _rewrite_ all of my _everything_ because _somebody_ didn’t scale down her calculations!” She jabbed a finger at the paper-laden desk, curls flying.

“Take a break,” Adolin suggested, twisting his outstretched palm upward so it became an offer. “I know that helps me when I’m having trouble with my stances. Just a little while,” he coaxed, as Shallan’s eyes strayed back to her work. “For me?”

“You’re bad for my discipline,” Shallan said, but she took Adolin’s hand and tucked herself against his other side. She sighed. “You may have a point. My head’s so full I can’t even _think._ What were you two talking about?”

“Pretty-boy asked me how you saved my life,” Kaladin said, which was lucky, because Adolin hadn’t remembered. It sounded a lot less like idle curiosity coming from him, though, and Adolin wished he’d picked a more innocuous topic, not one that made his stomach clench as he looked between them, Shallan’s smile freezing on her face.

But no, that had been surprise, Adolin realized when Shallan spoke. “I thought you knew already,” she said. “I didn’t know I could, actually, we obviously don’t know a lot about the Radiants, and Pattern never said.Kaladin was hurt,” she said, and made a little, aborted motion, like she wanted to reach across Adolin to touch Kaladin, feel for herself that he was there and whole. Adolin swiped a reassuring thumb across her knuckles.

“Wasn’t bad,” Kaladin said, and frowned when Adolin and Shallan stared at him. “What?”

“You were missing for several hours,” Adolin pointed out.

“You were unconscious and out of Stormlight _,”_ Shallan hissed, and Adolin hadn’t heard that part. He fought down the urge to grab Kaladin’s vest and demand he take better care of himself. 

It wasn’t as if Kaladin would listen.

“It turned out fine,” Kaladin said, and not a little petulantly, “I woke up and Shallan was there, and Sigzil started shouting about Radiants, so she must’ve used some sort of surgebinding. Would be storming useful to know what, especially if it can be taught.”

“That’s not what happened,” said Shallan.She bit her lip. “I’m not exactly sure what I did, I was hoping you would be able to figure it out.”  
  
Kaladin crossed his arms. Adolin missed the warmth around his waist. “I was unconscious. As you have so _kindly_ pointed out.”

“But you’re a surgeon.”

“No I’m not,” said Kaladin automatically, and then—impossibly, how did Shallan _do_ that—softened. “Can you describe it?”

Shallan tapped her chin. “I remember it was, you didn’t have any Stormlight left, and you needed it, and I had spheres. And I kept thinking, if only you would use _that_ Stormlight, but you wouldn’t. And I wanted to _force_ you to use the Stormlight, and I guess I…I mean,” she said, squaring her shoulders and adopting a tone that made Adolin think of his childhood teachers in figures, “I took up the Stormlight, and I breathed it into you. Perhaps it had to be processed first, through a person? That implies that the energy in spheres isn’t an immediately usable form, and there’s something about human—Radiant—physiology that changes it.”

“We should find out how, if that’s the case. If it’s a physiological change, than it could affect how the rest of the body works. Field surgery is inexact enough. I’ll ask Renarin, see if he has any ideas. Breathed it into me, you said? Like resuscitation?”

“Actually, yes, though without chest compressions. I should have thought of using those. Though you _were_ breathing, if only barely. You just weren’t breathing in the Stormlight.”

“Usually it’s unconscious. Hm.”

“Unconscious is right.”

“I had it under control!”

“Syl didn’t think so.”

“Don’t use her to prove your points!”

“I’m not proving a point, I’m stating facts!”

“Hey,” Adolin said, before the argument could boil over into real anger, “What’s it like, breathing Stormlight?”  
  
“It gives us the ability to—“  
  
“No,” said Adolin. “What’s it _like?_ What does it feel like?” It was something he had been wondering about since Shallan had breathed Stormlight before him in the portal, the day the Voidbringers had come out of legend. The question made both his partners stop, considering.

It was Kaladin who spoke first. “It feels…good. Right. Like you’re yourself but more. How you should be.” He scowled, but it was a thinking scowl, not a grumbly one. Adolin was getting better at distinguishing between those.

“Like Shardplate?” he asked. Kaladin didn’t look like he was going to resume the sort-of-cuddling anytime soon, so Adolin slowly shuffled closer to rest his head against Kaladin’s chest. Kaladin’s only response was to angle his torso so Adolin had a more comfortable pillow, so Adolin counted the maneuver a success.  
  
“I’ve never—“ Kaladin grunted. “Storms. It’s hard to explain. Shallan?”  
  
Adolin was expecting a list of effects and symptoms, footnotes included, so it took him by surprise when Shallan cocked her head and said, with no preamble, **“** Have you ever smoked truthberry?”

“No,” said Adolin. “I always figured my father would find out. Have you?” he asked, delighted. The day that Shallan stopped surprising him would be a sorry day indeed; he hoped it never came.

“No,” said Shallan, and blushed.“But I’ve heard fairly detailed accounts of its effects. Stormlight doesn’t feel the _same,_ but there are similarities. It’s more that injuries are healed than pain is deadened, but I imagine the rush of relief doesn’t feel appreciably different. Senses feel sharpened, and with Stormlight, they actually _are._ There’s a swell of power, of potential, that makes one feel like flying. Kaladin even more than me, I’d imagine!”  


Adolin nodded, but he could tell that Shallan saw in his eyes he didn’t understand. She didn’t tease him, though. She teased him a lot, but not for the failure of his mind to grasp something. Never for that.

“You’re being too cognitive. Adolin here’s a physical sort of creature: he only understands if he can hit it with his sword.” By Kaladin’s usual standards, it was practically a drawl. Kaladin had no such restrictions for the topics of mockery, but Adolin found he didn’t mind it, from him. Maybe it was because he knew Kaladin didn’t mean it. Maybe it was because it was good to see Kaladin enjoying something, even if that something was taunting him.

Shallan smiled. “Are you volunteering yourself for a demonstration?”  
  
With his ear pressed against Kaladin’s chest Adolin could feel Kaladin’s pulse speed up, but when he spoke his voice was even. “Are _you?”_

Shallan lifted her chin extra-high, the way Adolin was learning she did when she was embarrassed but pretending she wasn’t, and stepped neatly around Adolin to grab the back of Kaladin’s neck and haul his face close to hers. His chin almost hit his knees. Adolin started to laugh, and then Shallan breathed in and a wisp of white smoke curled upward from her safepouch (which was— okay— Adolin was going to have to find her some kind of belt purse, because he didn’t know the rules for this but he was pretty sure that was indecent) to her nose and mouth. Her eyes glowed faintly. 

Heralds, Adolin was never going to get used to the way either of them did that. He swallowed. 

Shallan cupped Kaladin’s jaw and parted her lips to release the Stormlight in a long, slow sigh, pouring it directly into Kaladin’s open mouth. Kaladin sucked it in, staying hunched over even when Shallan drew back; his eyelids fluttered once, twice, and then closed.

He _did_ look drugged, now that Adolin was close enough to tell. The tense lines around his mouth and eyes smoothed over, and there was almost a smile on his lips.  
  
Shallan swooped back in for another go, and this time Kaladin caught her lifted hand and tangled their fingers together, drawing both hands to the center of his chest. They moved in perfect tandem this time, Shallan exhaling at the same time and pace that Kaladin inhaled, as if they were sharing one single breath. The Stormlight that didn’t make it into Kaladin’s mouth blew out around his face, cloudlike, pouring over the angle of his jaw to make a tiny Stormlight water-fall down to his collar. Shallan kissed Kaladin— barely, just a touch of lips against lips— at the end of it, and ducked down to suck back in a tiny bit of the stormlight swirling against his neck.

Adolin thought he might pass out.

“You need to sit down, princeling?” Kaladin asked, but his voice was a low, lazy rumble, and didn’t help at all. Adolin felt a sudden jolt of something that should have been panic, realizing how far in over his head he was, but as Shallan pivoted on her heels to smirk at him he realized it was something else, something that felt _good._  
  
Oh, storms.  
  
Was this a _thing?_  
  
He was never going to live this down.

“Your turn, I think,” Shallan said thoughtfully, and held out her hand; Kaladin wordlessly reached into his pocket and filled her palm with bright new infused spheres. Shallan hummed a tuneless cascade of notes matching the rhythm of the spheres dropping one by one, and then giggled.

Adolin pointed the spheres. “But I can’t— I’m not—“

“We know, dear,” Shallan said, and dragged him down the same way she had dragged Kaladin. Her lips were against his, soft but _cold_ , from the Stormlight, Adolin supposed. He gasped at the shock of them and Shallan used the opening to fill his mouth with Stormlight. He couldn’t breathe it in like she or Kaladin could, but he could _feel_ it,  wet like fog. It tasted like her. Or maybe that was just in Adolin’s mind, but if so his mind was convincing enough to fool the rest of him _._ Adolin tried to make Shallan linger, moving his lips and flicking his tongue gently against hers, but she withdrew and left him straining after her. 

Never, _ever_ going to live this down.

Adolin considered that it might be worth it.

Not quite stupid enough to see if breathing Stormlight instead of air would choke someone who wasn’t a Radiant, Adolin let Shallan’s Stormlight (Kaladin’s? Both? _There_ was a thought) out in a thin stream, trying to savor it as long as possible. He was lightheaded when he stopped, though Adolin didn’t think it was from lack of air.

“Does that make sense?” Shallan asked. She was a _menace._ Adolin was maybe probably going to kiss her. Right now. He told her so.

“All right,” she said, and her laugh faded off into a sigh as he did so. Blindly Adolin reached out towards Kaladin, and was rewarded with the feel of a warm, calloused palm sliding into his. 

“My turn, I think,” Kaladin said, mimicking Shallan. Adolin turned his head and Kaladin caught him by the mouth. Adolin’s arm was still around Shallan’s waist, his other hand still gripping Kaladin’s, and he was glad they were all so close because he suspected he’d fall over if he tried to walk right now. Shallan tugged him back around and she and Kaladin passed Adolin back and forth for a time, their kisses becoming more languid but also more filthy. When Adolin was breathing too hard to respond properly (Stormfather, why was it like this, this was just kissing, _it was never like this_ ) Kaladin sucked in the last of the Stormlight from the spheres he’d given Shallan and gave it back to her along with an edge of teeth. Adolin could feel himself going cross-eyed trying to watch them both.

“Sometimes you _do_ have good ideas **,** ” Kaladin murmured against Shallan’s mouth, and pulled back with a look of regret. All the spheres had gone dun. He leaned into the window and stretched his arms over his head, rotating them at the shoulders and wrists.

“Only sometimes?” Shallan sniffed, but her eyes were sparkling. “Speaking of, I really do have to get back to those calculations. Navani wants them by this evening…”

“Please don’t talk about my aunt right now,” Adolin begged, and Shallan laughed. She pressed a final kiss to his shoulder, over his uniform— as high as she could reach now that he had straightened back up— before turning and making her way back to the desk. Adolin watched her go with a sense of adoring, doomed helplessness, and looked at Kaladin to see the emotion mirrored in his expression.

“We’re very lucky men,” Adolin said. Kaladin nodded. Then, shaking himself sharply, he gave Adolin his best insolent eyebrow.

“You’re luckier than me,” Kaladin said. “I also have to court _you.”_  
  
“You wound me,” Adolin said, clasping a hand to his heart, and took the upward twitch at the corner of Kaladin’s mouth as an excuse to take his hand again. Kaladin snorted dismissively and looked back over at Shallan, but he let Adolin come close again and lean his head against his shoulder, and he didn’t let go.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Damn I should make "Kaladin and Shallan turn Adolin into Jell-O" its own tag, I seem to be developing a theme)


End file.
